72 Hours and Counting
by BandGeek58407
Summary: Riley tries to occupy himself during a bet that says that he can't stay up for five days straight by typing whatever comes to mind. Silly and nonsensical. Oneshot.


**Excuse me as my two-in-the-morning-I've-been-trying-to-fix-a-problem-for-two-hours-and-now-I'm-delirious brain takes over my writing.**

**Yes, so those were the circumstances surrounding this, which has actually been sitting in my computer since mid-June. And seeing as I have not posted anything in a while, I couldn't resist any longer. I swear I haven't stopped writing; I just have about negative hours of free time right now. (sweatdrop)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own NT as much as an aardvark does. At least it got mentioned in number two.**

XXX

Aardvark. Hm. What an interesting word. Surely Ben has reminded me enough times already that this particular word that I have been ruminating over does not have five letters like I so wrongly assumed and I think I need some punctuation right…here. Ta-da! I love punctuation.

And I've been up for three days straight.

It's a bet with Ben. A "Ben-bet," if you will. And I'm determined not to lose. He said that I'd crash after five days, but _nooooo_, don't tell that to Riley Poole, oh no, because he will beat you down to the ground with a giant roasted baguette straight from the best bakery in Paris, yessir he will.

And switching out of third person…now. With more punctuation. Yipee!

We had an exercise in English class about punctuation and its different functions. I fell asleep. Maybe I should call my English teacher to let him know I'm thinking about punctuation—no, it's like, four in the morning and I don't think he'd appreciate that. I don't even know his number and he's all the way back in Seattle and that's kind of far but there it would only be like, one in the morning which isn't as bad and I need more punctuation…here.

Woo!

I can't believe I still have two days left to go. A few hours ago it occurred to me that it would have probably been really smart if I had made Ben do something too, like not talk about history for five days straight. But he might explode. Fortunately sleep-deprivation does not cause explosion, implosion, ex-implosion, in-explosion, or any combination of the four even though the last two kind of fit in that category anyway. If sleep-deprivation did have those side-effects, there'd be a warning label, because those are everywhere. There was even one on my pillow, I noticed, when I was staring at it forlornly the first night.

That was before I got rambly like I am now. Ben-bets do that to you. Abigail got into one and, wowee, I didn't see her for almost forever and it was kind of nice, I do admit. No one was bothering me about my caffeine intake, of which I have zippo at the moment.

It was another part of the bet: I can't have caffeine.

I think my punctuation's pretty sophisticated for a sleep-deprived, non-caffeinated mind like myself, seeing as there's a colon up there, and even a dash.

Wow.

An entire colon is in my Word document. I wonder who it belonged to and how the heckle-shmeckle it got in my hard drive, because that's kind of nauseating if you think about it. Who goes around putting body parts in word documents?

Time to join the ranks.

GALLBLADDER!

It feels nice to fit in.

Maybe by the end of this Ben-bet I'll have an entire ecosystem of body parts. But it's not Halloween, so I hope not. Maybe a little man will invade Word and kick the butt of that annoying little paper clip who always asks me if I'm writing a freak-duh-deeking letter. Of course I'm not; there's a thing called e-mail, Mr. Paper Clip.

And what kind of paper clip has eyes, anyway?

I'll tell you what kind: an evil kind. He's the one frolicking around the network, flailing kidneys and appendixes and rib cages at innocent Word users. Which means that by my adding a gallbladder, I'm a minion!

NO-S!

(See, the plural "no" substitutes all the many o's that would have followed, thus saving paper and/or electrical energy, thus curbing global warming. Personally, I think it's a bit chilly out, Mr. Gore.)

Anyway.

I can't wait to see what Ben and Mr. Gore and Mr. Paper Clip say about my wonderful success-ive-afy-ness in this bet and my nice new word; it's going to be hjuyhjjhujuhuhjyujhuhyjewewiui—

XXX

Hello, all. Ben Gates here. I'd just like to inform you all that, in case you didn't realize it by that interesting line of gibberish, Riley lost the bet. And now he owes me a grand total of forty-seven cents. The kid needs to learn to swallow his pride.

And, for the record, a lack of history DOES NOT make me explode. How absurd.

Ben

XXX

**So…was that strange or was it strange? Yeah…and also for the record, I put my head on the keyboard, and that above was what actually came out. I was trying to be authentic. **

**Reviews are really, really cool. **


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